Damian Hess has been recording and performing as MC Frontalot for 11 years now. When he started out the music he made didn’t have a name, so he named it himself: it’s called nerdcore. Frontalot raps about computers, video games, Dungeons and Dragons, superheroes, action movies, cartoons and other things beloved of the Comic-Con

Joss Whedon’s movies don’t make billions. His last foray into TV, Dollhouse, was canceled after two seasons. The one before that, Firefly, lasted only eleven (glorious, unforgettable) episodes. But more than any other writer or director working in Hollywood, he represents the authentic voice of the fan in the big-studio world, and more

Today I was able to meet up with, seriatim, three artists who in different ways exemplify what Comic-Con is about. They are not the richest or most famous people at Comic-Con, but they are its royalty. If there is a soul within the heaving mass of hype and advertising that Comic-Con has become, they are it.

So George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Christopher Paolini, Scott Westerfeld, David Anthony Durham and I walk into a bar.

No, seriously, we did. After the show floor closes at Comic-Con, big entertainment companies throw parties at bars all around the city. Mostly they’re the big movie and game companies — in the great Comic-Con …

Dateline: San Diego! Where every year countless hordes of “Trekkies” and “cosplayers” and other freaky “pocket protector” types descend on the convention center for what “some” have called “nerd Woodstock”…

OK. Now that’s taken care of.

The first thing you notice when you get close to Comic-Con is the creeping …

Paolo Bacigalupi, in case you don’t know, is one of the most exciting SF writers working right now. His first novel The Windup Girl won both the Hugo and Nebula awards this year. It’s radical and amazing. It would be a good idea for you to read it.